


lift me higher, let me look at the sun

by tanktrilby



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extremely casual body horror, Half of this word count is just Tim swearing at the Entities, M/M, Mild Language, Resurrection, Slaughter Avatar!Tim, if you think dying can stop Gertrude from wrecking shit you are severely mistaken
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:36:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23215624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanktrilby/pseuds/tanktrilby
Summary: In which Tim Stoker lives as he died: with two middle fingers up at the Beholding, an eye for pretty faces, and complicated feelings for the man who used to be his closest friend. The urge to end the world in a flare of blood and gore is also not new.Featuring murderous children, murderous old men, some badly-timed kisses, pining, jealousy, existential sorrow, and Michael.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Tim Stoker, Gerard Keay/Michael, Gerard Keay/Tim Stoker, Jonathan Sims/Tim Stoker
Comments: 25
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

They offered him a job before they’d even finished stitching him up. “It’s not even much of a career change,” said the man, who looked intensely familiar when Tim squinted just right. “Not compared to your track record, anyway.”

“My what—” he began, before realization settled damply in his veins. “Oh. The fucking Institute.”

“Exactly,” said the man, seeming semi-amused. “We’re running a similar, rival organization to keep an eye on the Eye, if you’ll pardon the expression. Make sure it doesn’t overeat and grow too powerful, that sort of thing.”

Tim flexed his hand. He’d meant to curl it in a fist, but he was missing too many fingers for it to really go anywhere. “And why the hell would you want me?”

“Because you just proved your mettle when you took down the Stranger’s ritual,” said a new voice, crisper, and Tim quietly fractured his bones further trying to see who it was. “Because you rebelled under the Eye’s control more savagely than most of us. And because you detonated a roomful of C4,” said the voice, as the owner came to stand over him, “and you survived, out of sheer spite.”

Tim blinked and the old woman smiled down at him. “I think you’d be a great asset, Mister Stoker.”

“Gertrude Robinson,” Tim said, eyes narrowing. “The old Archivist. You’re supposed to be—”

“Dead?” she inquired dryly. “In this instance, reports of my death are perfectly accurate. Dying didn’t mean that my job was done, however: the Entities are more powerful than ever, and there is a new one on the rise. I viewed my death as a convenient way to break ties with the Beholding, and struck up a deal with the End instead.”

Tim looked over her shoulder deliberately. “And him?”

Gertrude smiled thinly. “Eric is perhaps the most successful out of all of us at thwarting the Entity we all once served, in the Archives. He has his own unfinished business.”

“Is that why I’m alive?” Tim asked, hating how uncertain he sounded. He cleared his throat. “Because of—unfinished business?”

“Alive isn’t quite accurate,” Eric said, gentling his tone. He looked at Gertrude for a moment before he took a steadying breath, and continued, “We think that in those last moments, you might have invoked the Slaughter. They’re known for their violence and their hatred of the Stranger, both of which were your governing emotions when you detonated that bomb.”

Tim stared at both of them, anger mounting. “Are you meaning to tell me that I finally signed my life away from fucking Elias, only to be enslaved to some other creepy god gloating at us from the sky?”

Gertrude’s lips twitched as she fixed her glasses. “Not all relationships with Entities are as…draining as it is with the Eye.”

“Oh, so I traded in an abusive nightmare monster for a wholesome one, good to know,” Tim snapped. He tried to sit up before the awareness that he doesn’t actually possess any leverage to push up from hit him—his legs were gone. He turned, dangerously, to Eric. “Where are my legs.”

Eric’s eyebrows rose. “You can’t feel them? They’re right there.” He reached for a book at the bedside and mumbled under his breath as he flipped through the pages. Two minutes of this, and he turned to Gertrude with an aghast expression.

She barely blinked. “We clearly don’t possess the full range of skills to stitch you back together completely," she said. “Coming this far was a medical miracle, but it seems we need someone with a more direct connection to the Flesh _,_ so to speak.”

Tim looked around. The three of them were alone in the hospital room as far as he could tell, so it made no sense when Eric sighed, and said, “He’s not going to be very happy about this.”

He turned to the ceiling, and for some reason called, “Gerard?”

A few beats of absolute silence followed.

“He’s being shy,” Gertrude said briskly. “In any case, Mister Stoker, the plan is to enlist our field agent Gerard to accompany you to someone who may put you to rights.”

“I literally exploded,” Tim said, feeling like maybe they’d forgotten. “There’s no such thing as putting me to rights. To sleep, maybe. But I honestly don’t feel--”

What followed was a scene straight out of a movie. The doors swung open and a man strode in, long overcoat flapping at his knees. His dark hair was gathered at the nape of his neck, light roots peeking through. He was long and lanky and had legs like bicycle spokes and the greenest eyes Tim had ever seen.

Something flipped in Tim’s stomach.

“Maybe I should stop going out on missions altogether, make it easier for everyone to call on me all hours of the day,” the man was ranting, his hands gesturing like caged birds. He was a thunderclap in the dead stillness of the room and Tim found himself leaning forward, eyes wide. “It’s not as if our imperative is to get rid of all this evil shit as soon as possible. What is it now.”

“A small matter of putting a man back together,” said Gertrude. When Tim managed to rip his eyes away from…Gerard? Was that his name? He found Gertrude looking straight at him, a thoughtful frown on her face that vanished as soon as he caught it. “We need you and Mister Stoker here to contact Hopworth.”

Gerard’s eyes barely flickered towards Tim before he spluttered, “ _Jared Hopworth?_ You want me to contact that lunatic?”

“Lunatic’s not really an insult in current company,” Tim said, petulant that those green eyes had hardly touched on him. Withheld attention from attractive people was his Achilles heel.

It worked. Gerard wheeled on him, one dark brow hiked up high and calling attention to the silver hoop going through it. “Are you really in a position to decide that?” he said, icy. “From where I’m standing, it looks a bit like current company is the only reason you’re not a fairly unappealing splatter on the pavement right now.”

He couldn’t be more Tim’s type if he _tried_.

“Give me some credit,” Tim said with a grin. “I’d be the best-looking goddamn splatter you’ve ever seen.”

Gerard rolled his eyes. “We’re hiring clowns now?” he addressed this to Eric even as he slid a phone out of his jeans. “Should have hired Orsinov then, at least she came with a referral.”

Tim tensed.

At the silence, Gerard looked up with a faint frown. “What—” his eyes traveled from Eric to Gertrude, widened and then dropped back to Tim. As much as he’d been craving the attention, Tim squirmed uncomfortably underneath it. Those eyes are so _bright._ “You have to be joking. _This_ is the moron who dismantled the Unknowing? Some yuppie prick from a fashion magazine?”

While Tim tried to work out what this meant for him in the context of getting in Gerard’s denim jeans anytime soon, Eric made shushing noises and raised his hands towards Gerard, despairingly. “He works—worked—for the Institute.”

Those green eyes sharpened. “In the Archives?”

“No, in IT, actually,” Tim said pleasantly, smiling when Gerard’s sharp features went slack with incredulity. He tried to shift, get a better look—only to become acutely aware of the parts of his spine that were gone. “Fucking ow. No, no, I feel fine,” he assured Eric, who stepped forward with an expression of pure guilt. “Actually, come to think of it, does anyone know what happened to Jon? The, uh, Head Archivist?”

Gertrude looked strained. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, making Eric turn to frown at her in visible confusion. “The protection of the Eye is nothing to scoff at. In the meantime, my advice is to focus your efforts on getting better, getting intact. We found most of your vital parts in the debris, and Jared Hopworth will assist you in putting them all together. After that I wish to speak to you about joining us—”

“Hard pass,” Tim cut in, for all the good that it did—she barely seemed to hear him. Gerard even rolled his eyes.

“—and your contract, which you _will sign,_ and then we can look into the details of your first mission.”

“All this contract business aside, I’ve been meaning to ask. Who’s this Hopworth guy you keep talking about? Is he an underground doctor for ghosts or something?”

All three of them exchanged glances.

“You’ll find out,” said Gerard, evasively, and pretended to busy himself with his phone.

He found out.

“You cannot be fucking serious,” Tim hissed, as the shadows parted and the mountainous mass of flesh that apparently called itself Jared Hopworth stepped - _oozed-_ into the streetlight.

“Dead serious,” Gerard said with a soft chuckle. Tim _hated_ that he found this attractive. He really needed better priorities. “And he’s harmless. Mostly. If you know how to handle him.”

“So I’m guessing his whole deal is…body parts?” Tim hazarded, fighting the nausea to look critically at the creature-man. “Christ. What sort of man needs twelve fucking arms, anyway.”

“A man with a lot on his plate, clearly.”

Tim scowled at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? That…thing might be the only one who can put Humpty together again, and you’re here cracking puns. It’s almost as if this wasn’t important to you.”

Gerard regarded him coolly. Those eyes were electrifying up close, and Tim’s throat dried up immediately.

“Being dead is about a lot of things, Timothy,” he said, in a soft, dangerous voice, “but it’s as much about survival as being alive is. You’re not entitled to our help just because you might help our cause, and just because Dad and Gertrude rolled out the carpet for you doesn’t mean I don’t have better things to do than hold your hand through the scary bits.”

Tim could barely breathe through the war of indignant rage against an attraction that was drilling its way down to his bones. Every one of his nerve ending was alight.

He couldn’t even remember the last time someone made him feel this way.

“Tim,” Tim said, trying not to sound too strangled.

One of the fine, dark eyebrows went up.

“You called me Timothy,” he said. “It’s Tim. And Eric is your dad?”

Gerard regarded him for a beat, before his shoulders relaxed and he ran a hand through his hair, making a few dark strands escape from its bun. At his sides, Tim’s fingers twitched with imagined feeling. “You mean you can’t see the resemblance?” he said ironically, and when Tim mutely shook his head, he chuckled again, softer, and a little sad. “Yeah, I’ve been told I take after my mum. And, um. Tim?”

Tim guiltily ripped his eyes up from his mouth, back to those eyes. “Yeah?”

“You can call me Gerry,” he said, awkwardly, and a thrill runs down Tim’s spine. He fought down a manic grin while Gerard was busy staring at the floor.

“Sounds great.”

Gerard twitched. Faint pink stained his narrow cheeks. “Let’s start negotiations before he decides to eat you, yeah?” he said briskly. He pressed something small made of cool steel into Tim’s hand without meeting his eye, then stepped out of the shadows, long legs striding towards the horrorterror on the other side of the street. “Hey Hopworth! Mind fixing up my mate over here?”

Tim stared after him open-mouthed for a beat before he started, and opened his palm to find a pocket knife. There was a tiny carving of a set of teeth at the bottom, canines sharp as knives.

He slipped it in his sleeve before he chased Gerard, stomach turning in dread and anticipation. He thought that this must have been the feeling Dan chased his whole life: like he was rushing headlong into something that would eat him alive, reckless enough and optimistic enough to think he’d make it out just fine. 

“Why the fuck are you _stealing_ my bones? You’re supposed to put them in me!” Tim panted, some interminable amount of time later. Gerard was nowhere to be seen.

Something inside Jared went _crunch_ and Tim nearly gagged _._ “Give me back my ribs, you prick!”

Every time – _every single fucking time—_ he thought he’d finally hit rock bottom, the universe proved him wrong. Some clown, or wibbling many-limbed monster, or Elias fucking Bouchard would plant itself in his path and ruin his day all over again. He couldn’t believe he’d once thought his little alcohol problem and subsequent sacking after Dan died was the worst of it. No, far from it: he’s been on a five-year downward spiral and even _dying_ wasn’t enough to stop it.

A hand that is many hands and maybe a few eyeballs crashes down towards him. It’s _massive;_ it encompasses the whole of Tim’s vision and blocks out the last strains of sunlight in the dark little alley they’ve found themselves in, and it’s only a sense of shocked outrage at this happening _again,_ after all the shit he’d gone through to _get here in the first place,_ that gets Tim moving, twisting under the wobbling mass of flesh that’s about to crush him and driving his pocketknife into it as he goes. It looks hilarious for a moment—a toothpick in comparison to the fleshy vastness of Jared—but even as Tim watches, it _pulses,_ and begins to grow.

Jared is screaming and the windows are rattling and the pocketknife is the size of a fucking house when a voice behind Tim goes,

“Oh what the _fuck.”_

The owner steps to Tim’s side, dark hair and the sharp glint of silver around his throat. “Healing going well, then?” Gerard asks with a crook of his mouth like he finds this funny.

“He turned on me as soon as you left, you bastard,” Tim hisses through gritted teeth. Jared’s groans of agony as he thrashes around rattle him down to his very bones. “If you could stop being useless,” he adds, “for two bloody seconds and get me the rest of my bones back, that’d be great, thanks.”

“And of course I live to please,” Gerry says in that same bone-dry tone, with the same hint of a smirk on his lips. “If you’d pardon the expression.”

He does do something, though—a quick motion of his hand that Tim can’t follow, his eyes narrowed in concentration. He mutters something that sets Tim’s ears ringing and kicks up Jared’s groans by a full decibel, and leaps nimbly on to Tim’s face (just to be a dick, it’s not as if either of them can feel it) before plunging his hand straight into the mass of quivering flesh.

“Gross,” Tim mumbles, still being thrown around like a ragdoll as Jared thrashed.

“Oh don’t be like that, doesn’t all this skin on display turn you on?” Gerard snipes back. His smirk’s gone and he’s scowling in effort as he digs his hand around, not noticing the revolted look Tim throws at him. His fine, pointed features are set in concentration, his front teeth biting into his pink lower lip.

Before Tim can say something monumentally stupid, his face clears: “Found them!”

Gerard yanks his hand out with a _squelch_ and scatters a handful of ribs into Tim’s hair. Too preoccupied to complain, Tim yells, “Put my bones inside me, Hopworth, like we fucking agreed!”

One of the roars that come after that sounds a bit like _Payment._ Tim frowns.

“Hey Jared!” he yells.

Because his life has an accompanying laugh track now, both men turn to him with an inquisitive hum and a dying groan respectively.

“ _Jared,”_ Tim says, counting backwards from ten. “How about this,” he says, jerkily, because he’s _still_ being flung back and forth as Jared tries to free himself from the knife, which is now very visibly _eating_ him. Where the hell did Gerard _find_ these things? “This is far from being all my body parts; it’s just all that I could find. Whatever I don’t have with me right now—that’s fair game. I find it, you put it back in me. You find it, you keep it and. I don’t know, eat it?”

“You want to _make a deal with him?”_ Gerard sounds stunned.

Tim glances up, throws him a sunny grin. It’s probably some missing part of his brain talking, but he doesn’t think it sounds too bad. Who even needs a spleen, anyway.

“Why are you so surprised? It makes perfect sense! Besides, what are the odds that either of us will find anything that Gertrude couldn’t?”

Gerard shakes his head. There’s calculations going on behind his eyes that Tim will probably never figure out. “You realize that the knife, combined with your Slaughter invocation, will eat him alive given enough time, right? You’re his natural enemy here.”

“What are you getting at?” Tim yells. The violence of Jared’s motions as he tries to shake Tim and his horrific knife off are waning, like he’s getting weaker. “The guy’s about to fix my bones for me, Gerry, I’m not going to _kill_ him.”

Unexpectedly, Gerard laughs. It lights up his face, and it practically knocks Tim flat in a way ten minutes of Jared’s flailing had failed to do. He feels like he’s been waiting _years_ for someone to look at him like that: like he’s something incredible, someone brave and bright and blazing, someone who’s worth watching intently so as not to miss a single move.

“I think you’re a fucking idiot,” Gerard says, eyes bright. “But I want to see you pull this off.”

Tim’s shoulders straighten, even as he throws Gerard a smirk and a wink. The _then I better show off about it_ goes unsaid.

Eric’s alone when they return to the hospital. He’s quietly flipping through the heavy tome he’d been holding earlier. Now that he knows they’re father and son, Tim keeps noticing their similarities: not physical, but smaller, subtler things, like the lines around their mouths when they concentrate, and the way they push their hair back from their foreheads.

He looks up when they enter, and gives them both a smile. “Surgery went well?”

They apparently share the same morbid fucking sense of humor as well.

“I can feel my legs now, not sure if that’s any kind of improvement since they hurt like hell,” Tim says with a grimace. Eric makes a noise of sympathy, and Gerard snorts. “Where’s the boss lady?”

“Gertrude? She’s at the office, with standing instructions for us to join her once you boys got back.”

“Office?” Tim repeats dumbly, temporarily distracted from the grim reminder of the contract.

“It’s a modern take on the Archives,” Eric says with a smile. “We’ve been taking Statements and hiring former staff at a breakneck speed, so we needed headquarters. Luckily Gertrude prepared for it before she died, and bought out an office building near St James’s.”

“Before she died,” Tim repeated, feeling like he needed to sit down. He’d heard rumors, of course, and heard unflattering comparisons to Jon, but he had no idea— “Wow. Just, uh, wow.”

Gerard shot him an amused look. “You’ll get used to it, rookie.”

Tim immediately scowled. “I didn’t agree to join Gertrude’s army yet.”

“ _Yet_ being the operative word,” Gerard says, throwing a look at Eric that had him sighing and climbing off the bed. “We should get back to her and report our progress.”

“It’s disgusting how you’re not even trying to be subtle about sacrificing me to your hyper-competent god,” Tim mutters, and Gerard bites his lip like he’s hiding a smile. Tim thinks, dumbly, on a loop: _he’s gorgeous_. Eric comes up to him and pats his back, leading him to the door, when Tim hesitates.

Gerard stops behind him. “Don’t tell me you’re actually getting cold feet, Timothy.”

“Tim,” Tim corrects. He looks at both of them and takes a deep breath, plants his feet firmly. This could get ugly. “I’ll come with you to join your cult, but there’s one condition.”

“Not a cult,” Gerard growls, just as Eric’s saying, “And what’s that, Tim?”

“I want to see how Jon’s doing,” he says.

The silence that follows is deafening.

“The Archivist,” says Eric, slowly. He doesn’t sound angry, just…confused. Very confused. “I was-- we thought you weren’t on good terms?”

“I fucking hate him,” Tim agrees, paraphrasing. He roots around for a reason that sounds plausible, something beyond the nagging tug in his gut that tells him not to leave things unfinished with Jon. That alive or not, even resenting the hell out of each other, this is the last time he will see Jon again and he better make it count. “I guess, uh, I still feel a bit like I owe him for some stuff.”

Eric looks at Gerard, who’s searching Tim’s face as if he can find his secrets written on his skin. “Cutting ties does sound like a good idea,” he says, finally, and Tim’s spine relaxes a fraction. “I’m sure Gertrude wouldn’t like the idea of having an agent who’s beholden to an avatar of the Eye, either.”

Tim nods firmly, like this was what he was getting at all along. “Closure and all that.”

Gerard looks at him again, sharp as steel like he’s trying to call out a bluff. They stare at each other for a few tense moments before Eric clears his throat.

“If we are visiting the Archivist,” he says when they both turn to look at him, “then we’re in luck. He happens to be a few wards down in the same hospital, and it’s visiting hours.”

Tim shrugs and shoots them finger guns. “Tim the Lucky Mascot, that’s me.”

Eric smiles at him and takes the lead, leaving Tim and Gerard to trail behind him. As far as he can tell, everyone can see all three of them, though a few nurses who appear unexpectedly from corners sometimes tended to walk through Eric like he wasn’t there. As an experiment, he let his hand wander and touch both a passing attendant and Gerard on the shoulder. Both were solid, and both gave him identical dirty glares.

“So how does this whole bargain with Death work, anyway,” he says casually. “I once read a Statement where someone kept killing others to prolong their own lifespan. Similar premise?”

Gerard’s jaw ticks. “This may come as a shock to you, but we’re not all serial murderers, Timothy.”

“Tim,” says Tim. “That must be true, you haven’t the eyes for it. Well then, how does it work? Because you’re definitely supposed to be dead, but you’re definitely also in front of me.”

“Do you ever stop talking,” Gerard snaps irritably, and Tim feels a perverse thrill of getting under his skin. If it was impossible to make him like Tim, he’d settle for making Gerard so frustrated he couldn’t stop thinking about him.

“Gerry,” Eric reprimands, gently. Gerard instantly looks chastised.

“Yeah, I died and came back today,” Tim says, gleefully rubbing salt on the wound and smiling brightly when Gerard turns to glare at him. “Then you nearly fed me to Flesh Godzilla. I think I deserve to get my bearings a little.”

Gerard rubs the bridge of his nose. “Fine. _Fine._ The End is the oldest of the Entities and it doesn’t like the power the Beholding’s been gathering as of late. I guess all the Entities are aware of each other and keep each other in check, on some level. Anyway, Gertrude didn’t need telling twice.”

Tim privately thinks that Gertrude probably tied the Grim Reaper to a chair till They agreed to let her carry out her plans, but keeps his mouth closed. He also maybe does this because he likes how Gerard looks when he’s pontificating; how intent his green eyes go, how his sharp clever hands come up to gesture. “And?” he prompts.

“And, the catch is that we’re still essentially dead,” Gerard says. “We may have sworn to ally with the End to halt the Ceaseless Watcher’s march to absolute power, but that doesn’t mean we’re alive in any real way. Not like you are.”

“So,” Tim says with a quirk of his lips, “Zombies?”

Gerard gives him that look again: half-disgust, half-amazement. “Are all the other Archival assistants as obnoxious as you.”

“Only the lucky ones,” Tim said complacently, grinning harder at Gerard’s exasperated sigh. He’s so caught up in this: the back-and-forth, the low burn of warmth buzzing under his skin, that he almost forgets where they’re going, until:

“This is our stop,” Eric says, coming to a halt near a room with the door closed.

Something swoops low in Tim’s stomach. He clears his throat and wipes his hands on his jeans without making eye contact with anyone, trying to gather himself. How he feels. Why’d he want to see Jon, anyway? He’d made Tim’s last days miserable. He was little less responsible for the whole shitshow that bound him to the Magnus Institute than Elias Bouchard himself. He was—

\--probably dying, but also: the last good thing Tim saw before he died.

He staggers in a deep breath and walks in.

The first thing he realizes is that they’re not alone. Martin is slumped in a chair next to the bed, eyes closed, moments away from crashing to the floor. He’s pale like someone washed out the ruddy tint of his cheeks, the dots of his freckles. He’s holding Jon’s hand in his, and Tim’s heart flips over.

Jon is—terrible to look at. The circles under his eyes, once twin to Tim’s, now look like deep gashes someone took out of his thin face. He’s perfectly still, the monitor flatlining without urgency behind him.

“He’s…”

“He’s not dead,” Eric says, before Tim can choke out his question. “The doctors say his brain activity is off the charts.”

Tim’s fists clench. “It’s goddamn Elias, isn’t it. He’s doing this.”

“That’s the theory, yes. He’s wandering through the Fears he’s witnessed. This will be how the Beholding wants him to spend the rest of his days.”

Tim tries to imagine it, walking through nightmare to nightmare till his real body finally gives up.

“What can I do,” he says, through gritted teeth.

Eric makes a soft noise of confusion.

“I mean, how can I pull him out of there,” he repeats. He turns to Eric, and he knows he must look a little crazed, but he feels like there’s fire ants under his newly attached skin. He wants Jon _out._ “There _has_ to be a way for the Eye to let him go enough for him to at least wake up. Some kind of loophole that doesn’t involve pulling his life support.”

“There might be a way,” Eric says.

“ _Dad,”_ Gerard says sharply, loud enough to make Martin stir in his sleep.

Eric gives him a faint smile. “Nothing as dramatic as what I did, don’t you worry.” Gerard hisses, _that’s not what I meant,_ but Eric turns back to Tim. “I once escaped from the Eye.”

Tim blinks. “I assumed you died in the line of duty.”

“Not quite. You’re right, there is a loophole. But it involves removing the root of the connection to the Beholding.”

Tim stares at him for a long moment, trying to figure him out. He can’t be suggesting—surely—

Then he examines that thought and groans. 

“Of fucking course,” he says, cursing himself for not thinking of it earlier. “Nothing less than a bloody fucking ending for the Great Voyeur.”

“Now, I imagine it’s not that simple to free the Archivist from its grasp, and frankly I don’t like the idea of blinding a man in a coma. But we have means,” he taps the book in his hands, that he used to put Tim back together, “to remove one eye, and find him a replacement.”

It sounds like all the stuff Sasha used to bang on about: equivalent exchange. Tim's heart twinges, even as what he has to do clicks into place. 

“Switch mine with his."

“ _What,”_ Gerard says flatly, as Eric’s eyes widen.

“Take his eye out, and take mine as the replacement,” Tim repeats, impatiently. “He’ll have my eye and I’ll have his. That should be enough to pull him out, right?”

“Technically,” Eric says, slowly, and Gerard hisses, “You do realize that would mean being marked by the Eye again, right?”

“Look at me, Gerry,” he says, low and frustrated. “I’ll always _be_ marked by that damn thing, even when I’m six feet under. Even Gertrude doesn’t pretend to be totally free of it, if she’s still gathering statements. If it means that Jon won’t be abandoned in an actual never-ending _nightmare,_ then I say we do it.”

He closes his eyes and tries to reorient himself. His heart’s hammering in its newly constructed ribcage.

Tim flinches when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

Gerard freezes, and almost snatches his hand back. “I—” He searches Tim’s face again, and Tim can feel his face settle into a mask. There are things he won’t give up, even for a pretty face. “I don’t understand,” he says, and in his tone Tim can read how uncertain he is.

“I owe him,” Tim says, stilted, and doesn’t say: he was my friend, once.

When Tim had been half a person, cobbled together from fake smiles and the loss of his brother burning in him like a beacon, he’d seen Jon, cold and distant and always a little lost, and thought: _ah, he wouldn’t care, either way._

“I’ve always tried to keep things in balance,” he says quietly. “No strike goes unavenged. No favor goes unpaid.” He smiles, a fleeting twist of his mouth at Gerard. “An eye for an eye, in every sense.”

Gerard inhales sharply. There’s a look in his eye that makes Tim want to flinch away, hide—he doesn’t want to be seen _like this._

“So?” he turns abruptly to Eric. Hiding. It’s not his greatest moment. “Can it be done?”

Eric looks down at Jon, and Tim doesn’t know what he sees, but it makes him quirk a smile. “I suppose we all owe him, in different ways,” he says. He snaps the book open in reply to Tim’s question.

Tim closes his eyes, so that Gerard’s worried green eyes, the sharp cut of his mouth, are the last things his eye sees. He feels it behind his eyelid as his left eye dislodges itself from its socket, then the hollow emptiness in his skull before another, singularly _other_ eye takes its place. The new eye brings a sharp stab of pain to his head with it, and he can feel as it puts down roots in his heart and his lungs like a disease.

A few feet away, a rough voice whispers, “Tim?”

Tim opens his eyes—his, and Jon’s. The room is perfectly still, and Gerard is still just as beautiful.

He lets out a quiet sigh of relief and scrounges up a smile.

“Time to go, I think.”

They drop Tim off at the office and Eric gets to work wiping Tim’s admission records from the hospital’s database (“I’m handy around a computer,” he says with a faint smile) while Gerard heads out, muttering about a mission, both of them essentially abandoning him to Gertrude’s whims.

After they’ve left, negotiations are as brutally efficient as the snap of a neckbone. 

“Join us,” says Gertrude, her eyebrows arched above her eyeglasses. Now that he has enough organs to qualify as human, he sees her more clearly: she’s older than Tim remembered her, smaller than the stories made her seem. In a corner of her desk, a cat undulates in sleep.

“Nope,” says Tim.

Unfazed, Gertrude taps a spidery finger on the desk. “You’d think,” she says primly, “that an afterlife thwarting the Entity that once imprisoned you would be…satisfying retribution.”

This throws Tim off for a second. “You really think that’s how it works?”

Those bony shoulders lift in a shrug. “Worked for me.”

And it looks like it has: there are stacks of statements piled high and unruly around the open-plan office Gertrude was now calling her headquarters, and at first glance it looks to be around the same amount the Magnus Institute collected in its whole lifetime. It’s pretty impressive. Assistants flicker in and out, filing, reorganizing, stacking the shelves, and it reminds Tim of a well-oiled machine, makes him compare it, unconsciously, to how Jon ran the Archives, and suppress a smile.

Somewhere in this debris, there could be an explanation for what happened to him.

As soon as he catches himself thinking it, Tim snaps his eyes forward and doesn’t let them drift. “Still, hard pass. There’s no way you can cross into the Eye’s territory like that and expect not to serve it somehow.”

Gertrude’s eyes gleam. He must have said something smart. That, or she liked the way he spat out the Eye’s name. “And that’s why those are the very first precautions I took. Think of it this way, Master Stoker. If you’re going to compete against an institution that held monopoly over a market—that’s bound to make them angry, and taking steps to weather that anger is just common sense. And it helps that we’re all dead,” she adds, dry as bone. “Few of the Great Fears willingly cross the End.”

She makes a good case. Tim can feel the temptation like static electricity in the air, making his hair stand on end. If he joins her they could take the Institute down for good. Jonah Magnus and his entire rotted-core legacy.

His shoulders lift in a shrug, casual and nonchalant when he’s feeling anything but, and she sighs.

“Well, I can’t say I didn’t expect that,” she says, sliding a stack of papers towards him. When he shies away from them she presses them forward more insistently, saying, “it’s not a binding contract like you seem to be so afraid of, Tim. More of a temporary agreement that you can forfeit whenever you like. Your disinclination to allying yourself with us is understandable, but I won’t lie and say we’ll be able to find a substitute all that easily. You are, after all, in a rather unique position, Master Stoker.”

Tim gathers the papers and glances them over. She wasn’t kidding: they’re not binding in any way, which meant she had seen his reluctance coming a mile away. Tim must be losing his touch, if he’s turning so predictable.

She did save his life. And he thinks she might hate the Institute even more than he does. Are those good enough reasons to risk wading deeper into this shit?

He lingers for a beat longer before picking up a pen and scrawling his name.

The papers don’t start oozing blood and the Eye doesn’t kill him in a gory lightshow from the heavens. He doesn’t even get a papercut.

He slowly exhales and looks up. Gertrude looks pleased, but only marginally.

“With that out of the way, I’ll expect you’ll want to take some time to enjoy having a mostly-whole body again,” Gertrude says primly. “You have a week to do as you like.”

“What’s happening in a week?”

“I’m sending you and Gerard to retrieve someone. A potential ally,” she pauses, and adjusts her glasses. Tim frowns; were all her tells so elaborately conceived? Was he supposed to feel trusted? “Someone who was an archival assistant like you, before he died.”

Tim waits.

“I suggest you rest.” She sheds the air of vulnerability and returns to her brisk efficiency with a speed that leaves Tim blindsided. What the hell even was that? “It’s a long way to Russia, and I expect you’ll find that the extraction won’t go as smoothly as I’ve laid out in those files.”

“We’re going to Russia?”

She smiles, and Tim is suddenly struck by the sharpness of her teeth. Funny, how he didn’t notice before.

“To be specific,” she says, “you're going to Sannikov Land.”


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a lot of empty hours while they’re en route to Russia, the world greydark and smelling of tired airplane air. Even with Gerry next to him with his forehead creased and his head in an old book Tim keeps falling asleep and loses days at a time. He wakes up and they’re in Heathrow, then in Belarus, then in the dimly-lit backseat of a car with Gerard leaning over him to hiss directions at the driver. He falls asleep in the middle of conversations, phone sliding down his chest with the light dimming.

He dreams of Dan a lot. Wildbright skies and the way his teeth were just ever so slightly wonky, his smile more brilliant because of it. Endless summers when their parents were always jetting off somewhere, sitting on the steps of the pool with a book in his hand and Dan floating on his back. Dan’s hand on his shoulder and his uneven teeth caught on the edges of Tim’s vision, the summer that’s never ended since Tim was twenty-seven years old. Dan, fine-edged, backlit, laughing around the phrase: _urban exploration._

He wakes up hours later with the sound of in-flight movies tinny in his ears. Gerard hands him a bottle of water and he drinks, and passes out again.

Wandering through the bare bones of a circus next, eerily silent. No Dan. No Orsinov, either, but there’s an axe lying on the ground and it smells of burnt plastic. The tents looming black and white over his head. Only they’re not quite right: they’re not made of canvas, but mutilated plastic mannequins melted together. The rough shapes of tents, and tightropes, and cages, all cobbled together with arms and heads and fingers snapped off of things that once used to live.

Further in, the keys of an organ twisted into a lone figure, a faceless caricature of a ring master. It’s a mockery of a mockery, a half-remembered half-hearted rendition of a human. It stands perfectly still no matter how close you get.

“The great clown Grimaldi,” someone says. No one responds.

Tim wakes up with his left eye burning.

“Get up, lazy,” Gerard says, unspooling his long limbs. “We’re almost there.”

Towards the end of spring they arrive at Dikson, following the trail on a map Gertrude had stuffed into the case file and hindered, terribly, by the truckload of books Gerard insisted on lugging around.

“They’re useful,” he hissed.

Tim rolled his eyes and shoved a fistful of French fries in his mouth. “I’m just saying, I’d have thought being a ghost meant you’d have lighter baggage. Are those even corporeal?” he reached out to touch one, only to have his hand furiously batted away by Gerard, who glared at him icily for a second before letting out a sigh.

“They’re what you’d call my life’s work,” he says, not meeting Tim’s eye. He looks out at the inky twilight outside the hotel instead, tiny dots of construction equipment choked under a barren cobalt blue sky. They’d picked a place near the sea because the trail on the map seemed to lead to it, before vanishing completely—but it’s so _unsettling_ , dim and dreary and fucking _bleak_ like the serrated edges of some vast nothingness is scraping away parts of the world. His heart hammering, Tim turns his gaze back to Gerard.

“What does that mean,” he says, more gently this time. He loses Gerard like this sometimes, when he wanders out of the conversation like he’s forgotten something. “Gerry,” he says, a little louder, smiling when bottle green eyes snap to his. “Life’s work? You wrote down your sexy mysterious escapades?”

Gerard lips turn up, like he’s fighting a smile. “Hardly. No, these are all the Leitners I destroyed in my lifetime.” He raps his knuckles against the bag. “As soon as I was freed from my own, I found all these just scattered around me.”

“You never did get into that story,” Tim says, and raises his eyebrows at the way Gerard immediately looks shifty. “You were trapped in a book, yeah? How does that even happen to people? I thought you died from _natural causes.”_

He’s trying to hide a grin—the idea of Gerard Keay, lifelong bane of all things evil and supernatural, died from a _tumor_ of all things is something that strikes him as funny, if really fucking tragic. Gerard disagrees. He never misses an opportunity to call Tim heartless.

Rolling his eyes, a line of consternation drawn across his forehead, Gerard reaches to flick salt crystals from Tim’s jacket. “There’s a reason for that. It’s a long story, and I don’t want to get into it only for you to get distracted halfway and wander off to have a natter with an old lady or something.” Before Tim can protest –that happened _one time—_ he continues, “The point is, I got out eventually and found these.”

“With Jon’s help,” Tim guesses.

His suspicions are confirmed when Gerard’s shiftiness transitions into vague guilt. Tim sighs. “You can _bring him up in conversation,_ Gerry, I’m not going to flip my lid or whatever.”

Gerard opens his mouth, shuts it, and settles on, “He helped me get out, yeah. Right after I died, I was bound to a book and he set me free.”

“Bound,” Tim repeats, carefully.

Shrugging with one shoulder, Gerard gives him a brittle smile. His expression closes in on himself.

Tim bites his tongue. He’s an _idiot._ “You don’t have to—”

“Gertrude,” Gerard says softly before Tim can trip all over himself. “But we have…a _family history._ My mum went through with the same thing. Voluntarily.”

“What was it like,” Tim says, so quiet he can barely hear himself.

“Like being helpless in the middle of the ocean.” He exhales and pushes his hair back, his eyes scrunched shut. “Helpless and hopeless and being tossed every which way. But perfectly aware. Of _everything.”_

“Fuck,” says Tim, and a chuckle escapes Gerard like a freed bird.

“Fuck is right,” he says, low and rough.

In the semi-awkward silence that follows, Tim takes another handful of chips and stuffs them in his mouth.

“My brother,” he says abruptly. He feels Gerard’s eyes move to him, can feel those narrow features twist in confusion.

“He, um. He was taken by the Stranger. I could have…I was _right there,_ but…well,” Tim shifts in his chair. “And I know that he kept taking risks, and going out of his way to get in trouble, but still. It was, um, a shitty way to go. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t give for him to have another chance.”

When he can bear to life his gaze to Gerard’s again, he’s biting his lip. His hand is frozen in the middle of their table, like he’d begun to reach for Tim before he’d thought better of it.

“You’re more fucked up than you look, poster boy,” is all he says.

Tim snorts. “The holes in my face not enough of a sign for you?”

Gerard’s gaze drops to the line of scars along his jawline, down his neck where Tim knows the damage is especially gruesome.

Gerard doesn’t look like he’s looking at a mangled column of flesh, barely healed. His eyes are dark and intent. “They lend you a certain air,” he says. He reaches out, uses two fingers to tilt Tim’s chin up so he can examine him for a second before using the same two fingers to push his chin back down again, so that they’re looking eye to eye. “It would have been difficult for me to take you seriously if you looked like a teenage heartthrob. No, this is for the best.”

Tim swallows, and crosses his legs. Avoiding Gerard’s smirk, he clears his throat, and says, “So Jon broke you out, and you, what? Collected all your books and ran back to the people who got you killed?”

“I died of natural causes, remember,” Gerard says, still sounding amused.

Tim scowls. Gerard regards him with laughing green eyes for a moment longer, then relents.

“Yes, Jon found my book and burned my page by my request. It was only after that I met Dad and Gertrude and joined this whole outfit.”

“Who did the legwork back then? Your dad and Gertrude didn’t give me the impression they left the London office much and the assistants all seemed busy with organizing the statements.”

“Jan still does some of it, I think,” Gerard says thoughtfully. “That’s Jan Kilbride. He can’t stand to be near Gertrude but he hates the Entities more than all of us. And I think that’s why we’re going after Michael.”

Tim tenses.

“Michael Shelley,” Gerard says, softly. He circles the rim of his glass with his finger, the look in his eyes far, far away. “He’s probably still merged with the Distortion, even in death. Gertrude described the ritual to me and it’s not the kind of thing you come back from.”

Tim desperately doesn’t want to hear this, but he knows he has to. “I’ve met him,” he says, shortly. “Riveting guy.”

Gerard’s lips twisted. “That’s who he was, after. Anyone who knew him before would recognize what a goddamn tragedy it was, to feed someone that _good_ to a horror like that. He was normal. Kind.” His nail scratched raggedly on glass till it there was a scratch on the surface, his teeth bared in an expression of animal rage and despair. “He was a good person in the most fucked-up situation possible. He didn’t deserve what happened.”

Tim looks away. He didn’t want to hear this, this proof that Gerard was still impossibly hung up on—

Never mind.

And even more than that, there was the sudden stab of guilt: he’d spent his last days hating Jon’s guts, and Jon had barely scratched the surface of the ruthlessness of an Archivist. He tries to push it away but it lingers.

He eats more chips. “So what are the odds we’ll actually find him?” he asks, mouth stuffed and white. He hadn’t held much for table manners even when he was alive, and besides, Gerard’s expression made it worth it.

“Well, it depends. We have to find the actual island first, and it’s not as if it’s been the life work of explorers.”

Tim grins. Gerard was a pessimist down to his bones, but he always voiced things in a way that struck Tim as slightly awkward and charming, like Gerard was poking fun at his own downer theories.

“So it’s just a matter of being better than them,” he says, just for the flash of a smile that Gerard gives. He tugs on the file in Gerard’s hands. “C’mon, didn’t Gertrude give us any more of a hint? She made it there fine.”

The map hasn’t changed since the last time Tim looked at it: the path follows the winding way from the heart of the settlement of Dikson to the Kara sea and trails off. On the sea is a series of squiggles that look like Gertrude was testing her marker before she drew with it.

Then he reminds himself that this was _Gertrude,_ and snorts and snaps a picture of it on his phone.

“What are you doing?”

Tim raps his fingers on the table as the shitty signal uploads the picture into image recognition. “Looking for that hint. Ah, here we go,” he says, as the squiggles are presented in a cleaner font on the screen. He frowns. “It’s…Japanese, I think.”

Gerard leaves his seat to come round and peer down with Tim. “What’s it say?”

“ _Ningen shikkaku_ ,” booms a voice of thunder.

Gerard’s hand drops to his bag even as Tim leaps to his feet, knife in hand. They’d been alone in the dining area when they’d come in—a hollow-eyed waitress had put down their plate of fries and drinks without them even asking—but that’s patently not the case now.

In two separate corners of the room sit two figures, a man and a silver-haired child. They look ordinary enough—their clothes match the scant few others they’d met earlier in the day, and there’s no obvious reason that they’d be sitting together since they’re clearly not related.

But then the man drags his eyes up from his paper and the silence in them _echoes._

Tim is suddenly struck by how _big_ the room is.

He unconsciously steps in between Gerard and the man, disguising the movement with a cheerful, “What was that, sir?”

The man ignores this. “The name of our ritual that failed, like countless others before it. Like yours will fail as well.”

“We’re not looking to perform a ritual,” Tim says, when Gerard keeps quiet. He shoots him a questioning look before he tells the man, “Just trying to find an old friend. A casualty of a ritual.”

“You’ll find no friends on Zamlya Sannikova,” he rumbles. “Turn back now. I will not say this again.”

Tim flicks his knife open and keeps his voice light. “That makes a lot of sense, really it does. But our boss, you know, total ball-buster. If she finds out we called it quits without at least setting foot on the place, well.” He trails off delicately.

The child-shaped thing leaps to their feet, petticoats fluttering.

“ _I_ think we should let him go, boss. Maybe the Distortion and the Hunt will finish each other off and leave us in peace for-ever.”

The voice is lilting and precocious, accented with something that makes the vowels flow like water, lovely on the ear. Tim flicks his knife open carefully.

“The Slaughter,” he corrects, even as Gerard pushes an elbow into his ribs in warning.

The child’s silver eyes narrow. The temperature of the room ratchets up till Tim’s shrugging out of his first few layers, a vague plan of throwing his jacket in the kid’s face to buy them some time forming in his head.

“There must be something you need,” Gerard says out of nowhere. His thin face is pale like he’s recovered from a blow, focused, so his eyes take up most of his face. “There’s something you think he—no, not just Tim, both of us—something _we_ can give you.”

He’s looking at them like he’s about to eat them. It sends prickles down the back of his neck, and it’s the off-putting familiarity of it all that finally makes Tim realize what’s going on: Gerard’s drawing on the Beholding’s power.

His left eye twinges.

“Cut that out,” he says roughly, pulling Gerard to his side. It gives him an excuse to pass his palm over Gerard’s eyes under the guise of giving him a friendly cuff on the head. “Come on, we have no way of knowing that.”

Gerard glares down at him, and maybe okay, he’s sabotaging them both. “I can’t see,” he admits roughly. “It’s…it happened a long time ago. But there’s something they desperately need that they think you can give them.”

“I’m an excellent cocktail mixer, so I hope it’s that,” Tim says cheerfully before Gerard steps on his foot, something like desperate frustration written large on his face.

Tim takes a deep breath. “Don’t fuck this up for me, Sims,” he mutters under his breath, and—closes his right eye.

The rush of information that floods through his brain makes very little sense and is completely incoherent—but Tim grits his teeth and rides it out, shelving and re-shelving what he’s seeing against what he knows. Logical stuff. Archival assistant stuff.

“Your ritual failed,” he mumbles. His eye turns on its own to the child, tracking over the gore splattered all over their small frame. “ _Wax bastard_.” He worries his lip. “Your ritual failed because the Flame interfered. But…then it trapped you both here. You’ve been trapped here for _decades._ This _whole town,_ ” he hears the horrified edge of his own voice as the words tumble out. “This whole town is full of your kind trapped here. That’s _five hundred people._ I can’t kill five hundred people,” he says, swaying on his feet. Gerard catches him with a swear. “Even if I could help you, I can’t. I can’t.”

Gerard snaps his fingers in front of Tim’s face, forcing him to blink. Cruel, stabbing pain blooms bright behind his left eye, but it does the trick, gets Tim focused and breathing and mostly anchored back in the real world again.

“Slow down, crazy,” Gerard murmurs. Tim’s attention snags on his lip ring, the way his mouth shapes his words. “No one’s asked you to kill anyone yet.”

There’s no time to catalog the way intensely un-tactile Gerard is gripping his biceps, though—the melting pot of conflicting powers in the room is bubbling over. The child is making their way towards Gerard and Tim, steps dainty and measured, sandals clicking against the tile.

“Speak for yourself, Mister,” they singsong, hands clasped behind their back. “You’ll have to kill a _lot_ of people pretty soon. I’m _so_ jealous.”

Tim locks his jaw and pulls himself together. In his head the images are clear: the power that the old man draws on is something deep and _ancient_ in a way that sets his teeth on edge _,_ but the _kid_ is a different monster entirely. There’s something barely-restrained living under their skin and Tim’s looking down its starving eyes.

“Lead us to Sannikov Land,” Tim says quietly, addressing the old man, “and I’ll give you the end you want.”

“Shut the fuck up, Tim,” Gerard snaps. “This isn’t the time to play psychopath.”

Tim takes a deep breath and shrugs him off. “A clean death,” he promises. “Away from the crowd. Away from the cold.”

“Stop _being ridiculous_ , I swear to fucking Christ,” Gerard mutters as he roughly claps a hand over Tim’s mouth, turning to the man to say, “Ignore him. We’ll find our own passage.”

 _Of course_ he turns this into a diplomatic thing, Tim thinks frustratedly. Gerard’s looking at the quiet man like he’s the biggest threat in the room when there’s a kid with _red eyes_ and what looks like a fucking _battle axe_ twitching like they’re melting inside out.

Pure bloodlust. People like Gerard wanted to make sense of the world and the horrors in it, but this was what it came down to—this silver-haired kid and Tim staring each other down, twin monsters hidden behind their eyes. If they leave now, this kid will hound them till they’re gone for good.

Tim shrugs Gerard off. Surprise makes Gerard’s grip slacken as Tim steps out of his reach completely.

“The only reason you haven’t been able to end everything is because you’ve been keeping this brat in check,” Tim says softly. “We can take care of both of your problems for you.”

The child freezes and whips around to face the man. “No.” They wheel around, the temperature of the room simmering like lava as they charge towards Tim. “ _No! I’ll kill you!”_

“That’s enough,” the old man booms, and the child collapses like their strings were cut.

Tim takes a step forward, standing right next to the crumpled heap of the furious creature, now barely keeping its child form. “Think about it: it’ll be an end to the noise, the bustle of a growing settlement. No matter how perfect it was to begin with, there’s more people than you’d like, right? And they keep drawing closer. Choking out the seed of loneliness that you planted a long time ago.”

The child is practically shaking with rage. “Don’t listen to him! _Kill him right now!”_

“ _Tim,”_ Gerard says. There’s a hand fisted in his T-shirt, and Tim can feel his vision fracturing, breaking up into separate signals, binary code. “Come on, Tim. Don’t let it take over.”

His eyes are so bright, like twin stars. He really is—just so beautiful.

Tim twitches out of his grasp and raises his eyebrow at the man.

“The boy, too,” he says. He looks older, and tired in a way that goes deeper than bone. 

Tim doesn’t know if a child like that even _can_ be killed.

“Deal.”

On the man’s small, serviceable boat, Gerard shrugs off any attempts at conversation, so Tim finds himself outside the captain’s locked cabin to keep an eye on the writhing mass of wax and they spend the entire journey like two beasts in adjoining cages, missing the first sighting of Sannikov, and doesn’t even really register that he’s on land that doesn’t truly exist until they’ve disembarked and the man is facing them expectantly.

“We won’t be long,” Gerard says briskly.

The man plants his feet. “No,” he says, mild as water. “This first.”

His smile is tolerant as Gerard flicks his eyes to Tim, calculating. Tim holds his hands up in a gesture of: _ready when you are._ “You think we won’t make it back.”

The silence speaks for itself.

“You don’t think we’re strong enough,” Gerard prods again, taking a step to the man, his head tilted. “But…no, then you wouldn’t have ferried us here in the first place. You think Tim and Michael will finish each other off.”

“The Slaughter is a powerful god, and a handy one to keep around,” the man says, his smile cruel and sharp, “but like the Lightless Flame, the raw destruction that follows is rarely worth it. Tell me, boy,” he says to Tim, “can you even hear us through the death music?”

Tim blinks. The fragmented parts of his face don’t quite coalesce, like he’s a computer glitch. He keeps seeming skeletal than he truly is.

“What music,” he says.

Both Gerard and the man look taken aback. “Tim,” Gerard says sharply. “Are you saying you don’t—”

He’s interrupted by a roar of pure, incandescent rage. The Desolation kid –kid-shaped again, but barely, the illusion liquefying into globules of ashen wax—is vaulting the side of the boat and then begins eating up the distance towards them, boiling and slashing through the snow. 

“ _Butcher!_ ” it shrieks and suddenly that battle ax spins through the air wicked-fast and catches Tim on the shoulder and he goes _flying;_ this is just fucking terrible, this is all sorts of terrible. It’s taken a chunk off his shoulder out and cracked his collarbone, and it’s red-hot like a brand held to every nerve, even as the child physically charges at him while he’s knocked back. Every organ he has left is flushed and flaring, a panic reaction he didn’t know he had as the metal burns through layers of muscle and bone.

He can hear Gerard shouting, as distant as someone on the moon might call his name.

And then the thing is on him and it’s not even pretending to be child-shaped anymore, and the sharp pain of burning wax on his torn body is every other monster that’s ever taken a bite out of him, Orsinov and Elias and Jared Hopworth so that’s when his knife cuts a wide, silky arc over the belly, as easy as anything could ever be, and Tim’s brain’s one long litany of _when does this end when the fuck can I stop_ because he doesn’t know how long he can hunt for vengeance before there’s nothing left of him.

Wax spills out like a flood. Tim slices again and it gushes all over his open wound, all over the rest of him too, and the eyes above him have gone stupid with shock as the wax refuses to harden, again and again.

“Fuck!”

The Slaughter must have heard him way down in its abyss, though, because even before the creature stops thrashing the wax is edging with threads of bright, heatless fire. It could be just the natural reaction between flame and wax, though he hasn’t believed in the power that the Entities held as much as he does right then. It smells like nothing so much as dirty snow, sharp and sour in a way that feels grimy across the skin.

When Tim staggers on to his feet –the wax now indistinguishable from the snow-- the man is nowhere to be seen. He can’t think, not in any productive way, not anything beyond a deep and resounding _fuck_ that reverberates through the jagged shards of glass in his head, the blood gushing freely from his shoulder, and his hard, trembling heart. _Fuck,_ he thinks, on a loop, and, occasionally: _oh god, Gerry._

The world undims when the air in front of him simmers and a gash like a knife-wound appears in the air, and the sliver of darkness spits Gerard out. He hits the snow with an ugly _whump._

Tim steadies his breathing.

“Kid’s gone,” he croaks, focusing very hard on staying on his feet.

Gerard closes his eyes for a moment and he’s _lit up_ with rage. Tim drinks in the sight of him greedily, too woozy to really bother with subtlety.

“Come on, Gerry,” he coaxes, feeling distant and high-strung, and maybe a little like the world is ending. “You know it had to be done. We needed to get on this island somehow. And yeah, so maybe we had to kill two other avatars to do it, but at least it was willing, yeah? Did the old man say anything to you? Before he, um, left?” When Gerard turns his head away, Tim sighs weakly. “Yeah, I guess…yeah, that’s fair.”

Gerard pulls himself to his feet with obvious difficulty. His mouth is drawn in a thin line.

“We’re not going to talk about this right now,” he says.

He snaps his book closed and walks fast to where Tim’s swaying on his feet. His hands are angry but gentle on Tim’s injuries as he examines them, wiping blood from the back of Tim’s neck, squinting at the welts that Tim can feel rising across his body while Tim stands as still as he can, trying not to groan too loud. He doesn’t know how he looks. Like someone who got hit by a truck, probably. Like the universe’s favorite punching bag, more of a target than a man.

Tim can’t really think about that right now, so he focuses on Gerard’s cool hands, the tight worried shape of his mouth as he mumbles phrases from another of his books. Fine tremors go up Tim’s body even after Gerard’s somehow knitted his shoulder back together and almost set his bones entirely to rights.

His touch makes Tim think about how his vision had fractured, and the way he’d heard the bloodlust sing in his veins. The pain returns, bringing something like a desperate weight of sadness.

He’d _killed someone_ just now.

“Revenge isn’t worth it,” he croaks. “So why am I trying so hard.”

Gerard looks caught between wanting to slap him and bursting into tears. “Because people play with powers they don’t understand and fuck everything up for the rest of us,” he says, roughly. “And someone’s got to clean up the mess someday.”

Tim closes his eyes and gives himself a moment to remember Dan: his quick, uneven smile, his tumbling black curls, and once he remembers that he’s waiting for Tim out there he stops shaking and drags his eyelids open again.

“Gerry—”

“Shut up, Tim,” Gerard says tiredly, zipping up his bag. For a minute he hesitates, rubbing a hand across his face, and his shoulders are stretched like there’s an invisible rubber band holding them taut. Then he pushes past Tim and treks inland towards the echoes of laughter.

Tim watches him go for a snatched handful of moments. The battle axe the kid used is still at his feet, still alight with bright blue fire, and he picks it up, and forces himself to follow after Gerard.

Tim’s not sure what he was expecting, but the labyrinth of doors turns out to be shaped in a mind-bending caricature of a fairytale palace. He slows more and more as they draw closer to the structure, until he’s eventually standing still, looking up at the spires needling the skyline.

Gerard is forging ahead with his head buried in the map Gertrude passed on to them and doesn’t notice for almost five minutes that Tim’s not with him. When he does, he whips around with an expression of pure panic that’s replaced by a scowl when he spots Tim standing, unharmed, if wind-battered. “What?”

Tim shrugs helplessly, his hands tucked in his pockets. “Just thinking about what a bad fucking idea this really is,” he says honestly.

“You’re thinking about that _now?”_

“Come on, we can turn back,” Tim says, fast. “I know you’re livid with me for the whole ferry thing, but we can cut our losses and go back to Dikson right now, Gerry. I have a…a feeling,” he says, his shoulders hiked up around his ears. “Let’s just go back and tell Gertrude it was a bust.”

Gerard huffs a breath and looks away. For a beat he’s silent.

“You should go,” he says, finally. “Tim, you’ve had a shitty time of it. And it’s not like the Slaughter gets on any better with the Spiral than it does with the Desolation.”

“It’s got nothing to do with that,” Tim groans. “This is just a _terrible plan,_ don’t you see? Especially after that guy basically confirmed that we won’t find your friend human. What even are the odds that we’ll convince someone that erratic? Why tempt fate by going in and getting trapped in there?”

“Why indeed,” a voice asks, laughing, right next to Tim’s ear.

Tim spins to find dead, empty air. The laugh twists around him in the wind, lingering, before drifting away.

When he turns back Gerard’s gone.

Even as Tim’s gears begin whirring, he’s waiting for the rage to come, for the pit of fear; but all that seems momentarily swallowed by how he’s too goddamn _drained_ to truly give a fuck. A tired sort of patience holds him back, one that Tim associates with his last days at the Institute, which in turn makes him think of Elias and…wow, that’s the last fucking thing he needs. He’d honestly prefer to fly into a murderous rage. Spend the rest of his afterlife mindless and violent, hacking other assholes to pieces with an axe.

Finally he gives up and shouts, “Gerry? Gerard, where are you?” feeling incredibly stupid.

The wind laughs at him some more. “A little too late, Stanger-killer, but you should be used to that by now.”

“Fuck off,” Tim mutters, then, raising his voice, shouts, “Gerry? You out here? Just use one of your creepy books or something to give me a sign, that’d be great!”

An echoing giggle. “You will find no reassurance even if you find him. A true disciple of his mentor, so… _adept_ at distorting the truth. It twists me up with envy to find him with such a willing audience as you, Stranger-killer.”

Tim’s hands tighten around the axe. The next burble of laughter rings with true delight.

“Do I have the honor of beholding the weapon used to end the Stranger? A hearty whack, and one of the great Fears that darkened the doorstep of humanity, gone, forevermore. It really makes one wonder about the sheer _magnitude_ of despair fueling your power.”

“It was a little something the poets like to call C-4,” Tim says. His hands flex, again, towards the direction his ear itches from the grating dissonant laughter. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it, Michael, aren’t you a man of the world? Aren’t Archival assistants like you and me supposed to have a quote-unquote ‘innate zeal for research’? Or was that just Elias running his mouth again.”

“Interesting that you mention the Beholding,” the voice says, and it’s not laughing anymore. Tim’s vision is fractured more than ever, though, like he’s looking at the world through a thousand compound eyes. Each time he tries to focus his vision completely whites out in a bright prickling suckerpunch of pain. This is…probably pretty bad.

“That eye…I wonder if you may use your stolen eye to find your way through my doors? Why don’t you shut your own and find out?”

Tim’s shaking his head before he catches himself. “Hard pass.”

The voice laughs again with restored delight. “Why, Stranger-killer? Afraid of the monsters that lurk in your Archivist’s head? If it’s opening the door to his powers that you fear, then I can assist. Doors, you see, are my specialty.”

“Maybe next time,” Tim says, grimacing. The effort of not swinging the axe -especially when he mentioned Jon- has sent hairline fractures up a few of his brittle fingers. He grits his teeth and unfolds his grip, letting it sink into the snow. “And if you like doors so much, how come I haven’t seen a single one?”

He knows he’d regret saying it, and it’s almost gratifying when not even a full minute passes before the light on the snow _slants_ and a door appears mid-air.

Next to Tim—exactly where the voice was coming from, where it was taunting him to swing his axe—stands Gerard, his eyes fever-bright and looking as if he’d witnessed a murder. His knuckles are white around one of his books. Gertrude’s map is nowhere to be seen.

“We’re inside the damn thing, aren’t we,” Tim says, not really a question.

Gerard’s mouth is a knot of rage. “The map was…inaccurate,” he says. “I don’t know why I thought otherwise. The way the light falls on the snow makes it seem like the map is correct, so that means he knew we had it and made his fucked-up mirages change accordingly.”

“So…Michael Shelley’s definitely in there?”

Gerard’s expression catches, morphs from incandescent fury to something like heartache, something that sends an unwelcome and unexpected judder through Tim’s ribcage.

“I can’t tell,” he says, sounding devastated. “I thought I knew him better than anyone, but…it’s been so long.”

“Well, make up your mind.” Tim’s eyes snap carefully to the door as its hinges begin to creak. “Because I’m pretty sure he wants to kill me.”

This time, when the laughter spills like jagged shards into the air again, stabs of excruciating pain in his ears, it's louder than before, more disjointed than before. The shape of an enormous hand places itself on the edge of the door, and--

Michael steps out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For no real reason, I decided to import [two](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Dazai) [characters](https://lagooncompany.fandom.com/wiki/H%C3%A4nsel_and_Gretel) to mess around with instead of making Peter Lukas rock up to escort our young heroes (as well as Gertrude and Michael, in the past) to Sannikov Land. I'll justify it by saying a) timeline-wise, it makes no sense for Peter to be here since he's canonically head of the Magnus Institute right now, and b) if I write Lukas I will inevitably also mention Elias and no one needs to read an entire chapter of Tim trashing the Institute.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
